So I didn't really do much over the break, I actually feel kind of bad because there isn't much for me to blog about anymore. Most of the art stuff is done now, but I did work on some screen capturing over the break.

The only thing, is that Cam Studio sucks. I can either take video that looks really crappy but that everything moves the way it should, or I can use a better codec but nothing moves in the video.

So we are thinking of getting a copy of Fraps to do the screen capturing.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

So today we had to present our game to some people from EA and other large companies to get some input for our game from professionals in the gaming industry.

Overall they really liked our games, all three of them. They had some really constructive for our game, most of which I can't remember at the moment.

A lot of it has got to do with the Tech side, and very little, if any, with the Art side.

Things have really slowed down for the Art side, we have a few things that we still need to do, but very minor. I haven't posted anything for the last week and a half, mainly because I haven't done anything for the team.

I should've been working on the trailer, but my Machinima class has taken a lot of my time in the last week.

Over the spring break, I hope that I will be able to work on the trailer and so some screen capturing.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

So as we get near to the finish line of this great project, things are starting to slowdown for the art team. We still need to make a few more assets for the game, but they aren't super important and we don't know if theres going to be time to add them in. So in the meantime I will record shorter bits of gameplay for the trailer, since we will be making two trailers in total.

Charlie was telling me that we will need to make a trailer that will be in-game and one that is the short "promotional" trailer. We still don't know how hard it's going to be to make those two trailers, but we have to get started on them because we don't want the deadline to creep up on us.

We didn't really do much in class today, mostly because about half the group was missing. But we did get to talk about a few things concerning the final boss battle for the game. We got some things worked out, and now Felix just need to talk to the rest of the programmers to see how its going to work.

I will try to review another game since I don't really have much to do for this sprint. We need to have some consistent activity on our App Hub account if we want other people to review our game in the next week or so. So far, not many people have reviewed game (at least not that I know about) so hopefully I will be able to help out the team this way.

One last thing, next Tuesday is the Major Expo at the Union Building and I will be there representing the Film side of our team. We will be showing off our game to people that come to the expo to hopefully get them interested in the EAE program if they haven't already declared a major with the university. I'm not really sure who else is going to be there with me from the Tech side, but hopefully I won't be there alone.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

So I started to work on the trailer over the weekend. I managed to get visual studio installed on my laptop and I compiled the code to play the game on my laptop. Charlie suggested I use Cam Studio to do some screen capturing of me playing the game.

I started recording some stuff and everything seemed to be working well. But then after 15 minutes of playing, I tried to see how it looked and the file was corrupted and Cam Studio crashed on me.

Now we are thinking about using Fraps instead. One of our teammates has an unrestricted version of fraps and we will probably just use his.

I also reviewed another game last night. I'm trying to get us enough activity so that when we submit our game for play testing next week, we will have enough activity that we won't just be shut down because we don't participate in the community enough.

I'm also done making a few textures for the asteroids and I will give them to Charlie tonight so that he can review them.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

So Charlie said that it would be a good idea to start working on our game trailer. At the moment I'm playing around with Cam Studio for screen capturing.

But before I can start on the trailer, I need to finish the textures that I made for my asteroids. This is because the way that Mudbox makes textures won't work with what we have in mind.

The programmers made it so that the size and the texture of the asteroid will be random, which means that the texture won't match the other asteroids if they get one of mine. So I have to come up with something else. I will try to have that done over the weekend.

Then I will try to get really good at the game so that I can start recording cool scenes from the game to put in the trailer.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

So today is the day that we are suppose to be at Beta. And we are, sort of.

The tech guys say that there is still a few things that need to be tweaked (ex: the capital ship ai). So at this point we are really close, but not really there. But the game is playable at this moment. Some of the stuff might not be there, but it feels like a game now.

Rodger played the game, and he was very happy with how far we have come in just a few weeks. At the beginning of the semester, they actually wanted to cut our game because they didn't think that we could actually take what we had at the end of last semester and turn it into a game.

I also got to play our game for the first time today. I've been able to see some of the tech guys play it before, but never by myself. It felt really cool to actually see it with my own eyes.

Over this last weekend, I worked on a few asteroids to make them look just right. I was trying to add a normal map to each so that we could get some detail, but James told me to not worry about that. That the asteroids aren't really going to be all that important so just do a color texture and thats it.

So I've managed to complete two asteroids, and I'm currently working on another one. Since my Photoshop skills aren't that good, I've had to so the textures using Mudbox. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I think I'm doing a better job now.

Now that I have Maya on my laptop, I'll see if I actually have time to get around to posting renders of all the work that I've done.

That's all, thanks for reading.

Last class time, Charlie told me of a more efficient way to make asteroids within Maya. So I'm in the process of making different kinds of asteroids for the game. They are going to be different size and shape.

So we have till the end of this week to finish our game because we need to start Beta testing next week.

Yesterday I finished the first fighter that I made at the beginning of last semester. I tweaked a few things, but overall it looks the same. I also attached a few guns to the ship along with a few locators.

I also made an asteroid. I tried to make one in Maya, but I couldn't get it to look right. So I made it with 3ds Max and exported it in fbx format. Then I brought it into Maya to edit it. And then I ran into a problem.

3ds Max had made the model using only triangles, so I had to spend between 1 and 2 hours deleting edges to make everything quads.

It looks great now, but it's probably too high of a resolution. I don't know if I'll have to make it again or not.

During class, we didn't really do much. We did talk about another of the games that is also in the process of going into beta. But I won't go into that.

We mainly talked about what needs to be done to get to full beta.

In the art side of stuff, we need to finish a few things. We need to tweak some ships, make a tone more asteroids. And some other last minute stuff.

While on the note of asteroids, Charlie told me of a way that is much more effective at creating asteroids than what I did. We are trying to get them to look good, but at the same time stay as low poly as possible. Charlie wants me to stay below 200 faces at all possible.

I will give it a try tomorrow night while I'm in the lab, and see how that goes.

That's it, thanks for reading.

So I finally finished the capital ship that I've been working on for almost 2 weeks.

I emailed the file to Charlie and all I have to do is add a little more geometry since the edges need to be more rounded.

I will try to get the extra geometry in today. If not, then this weekend for sure.

Today, we had to bring our game to class to have Roger play it and critique what we have so far.

Today was the first time that I got to look at our game since the day that we had our "play date". I have to say that it's looking really cool. The models that Jeremy has textured for us are looking great. The game still needs a few tweaks, but overall is looking great.

For this next week, we have to build more enemy fighters, different types of asteroids, different models for the pods, and I can't remember what else.

I will be working in a few things. That's it for now, thanks for reading.

So before I get to the name of the name of the game that was decided on, I'm going to first write about what I've been working on.

So last week, I was working on a full size capital ship. But I didn't  like the way that it was looking. So I decided to start over from scratch. This is one is looking a lot better in my opinion, and now all I'm waiting on is for Brandon and Charlie to take a look at the file before I keep working on it.

For class today, we had to bring three names that we liked for our game. Then Bob, Roger, & the class gave us some feedback on each. After everything was done, we decided that our name will be:

The Last Pod Fighter

We might change it to just Pod Fighter or something like that.

Thats it, thanks for reading.

So I've had a lot of stuff due in other classes in the last 3 days, so I haven't had that much time to work on the capital ship (or enough sleep) so this is the first time that I haven't been able to finish a task on time. :(

I will get to work this weekend and have it done by Tuesday at the latest.

Today in class we talked mostly about the importance of a name for our game. Rodger pointed out that we don't have the time or money to come up with a brand for our game. So the name for the game is something that is going to be really important when it comes to publishing it.

The name has to be descriptive enough that people will know what the game is just by looking at the title, but not too long either or random just because we want it to sound cool. Rodger gave an example of calling a game "Eclipsia." That name does nothing for the game, or any game for that matter.

The group task is to come up with three really good possible game titles by Tuesday, for that is when we have to lock in our game name. We have a few good names already, but we will find out for sure on Tuesday.

That's it, thanks for reading.

So my task for this sprint is to work on a full size capital ship. I started working on it, but it's harder than I thought it would be.

Usually I look up pictures from different types of ship on Google, and then try to get bits and pieces from each to come up with a new design. But this time I don't think it's working.

I've noticed that most of the capital ships that I've found on the internet are all either really pointy or really round. I started to work on something resembling the front of this ship for now.

I sent the file to Brandon and Charlie to see if either one of them had any better ideas.

I will finish the capital ship by next class time so that Charlie can work on the UVs.

While in class, we talked a little about the assets and how we are going to use them in the game. Since Brandon is still improving my space station and is probably going to be the model with the highest poly count, we were all talking about how it was going to be used in a boss fight where it's the only capital ship and will spawn the occasional enemy fighter.

That's it, thanks for reading.

So last time I was absent from class and I didn't get that much stuff done on Tuesday. But yesterday (Wednesday) I managed to get the bomber ship that was assigned to me.

I gave it to Charlie to look it over, and do any modifications as he sees fit. Then he will do the UVs for it. And I'll post some renders over the weekend if I don't forget.

Also, I don't remember if I've posted this already (and I'm too lazy to check right now) but we are actually going to use the space station that I build as a capital ship. So I didn't really know that when I was modeling it, so I build it to be more of a prop that something that was actually going to be in the game.

At the moment, Brandon is redesigning some of the parts of my space station so that we can mount some turrets on it. Hes also trying to make it look more capital ship "like". And from what I saw today, its turning out better than what I had done at the beginning.

For my next assignment, I have to create a full size capital ship. This one is probably going to be the toughest thing that I've had to do so far. I'm not sure how its going to end up, because I don't really plan ahead. I just sit down and start modeling until I model something that I like. For this next design, I have to keep in mind that we are going to also be mounting turrets on the capital ship, so I'll have to be a little careful with the design.

Last thing I want to add, today the art team had a little chat and we came to one conclusion. We didn't really communicate when I was building the space station, so right now a lot of rework has to be put into the model. This could've been avoided if we communicated more often. So what I'm going to do, is that every time I'm done with one little "burst" of modeling, I'm going to email the file to both Brandon and Charlie to have them take a look at it. This way, there will be more input from everyone on how a certain model should look and we won't have to do what we are doing with the space station again.

That's it for today, thanks for reading.

So today I'm was feeling a bit sick and I couldn't make it to class. My first time missing class, including last semester. Hopefully it doesn't affect my grade too much.

Anyways, I emailed everyone to let them know the status of what I'm working on. So here is what I told them.

My current task include modeling a bomber class ship, which is about 50% done. It might need some minor tweaking, but not too much hopefully. Also, I had finished modeling the new space station last week. So over the weekend I had to layout the UVs and let me just say that its a nightmare. So I talked to Charlie later in the day, and he agreed to do the UVs for me.

Also, I think that we are going to stick to a pipeline workflow from now. I will keep doing models, and Charlie will do the UVs. I will try to do the UVs when I can, and let Charlie takeover when it gets too overwhelming.

That's it for me, thanks for reading.

So today is the end of our first sprint for the semester. I can't say that I got too much work done, but at least I'm trying. :P

The one thing that I would like to mention that I actually started to work on my space station again. I didn't really like that way that the other one looks, so I decided to hunt down pictures of other space stations and I found a few that I really liked.

So what I did is that I kept my original design, but I'm actually expanding it. My original design was kind of lame, so now I'm making look something more like this. It's not exactly the same, but I liked the way that it looks so I'm going to shoot for something similar.

Also, I volunteered to review one game this sprint. This is so that it looks like we are active in the Indie Community, so when the time comes to submit our game we won't be turned down just because we didn't contribute enough.

I haven't gotten any of those two things done, so I'll post some renders when I'm done with the new space station and I'll post my review when I'm done with it tomorrow night.

Also, for my next sprint I'll have to work on making a mid size bomber type ship. So far, most of the ships that I've made have been sort of "disc shaped", but this next one has to look a little more narrow and long.

One more thing, last time was our presentation to the Master students. I wasn't there because I had a class at the exact same time that we had to do the presentation, but it from what I heard I think it went ok. We got a lot of good feedback which will ultimately make our game that much better. Based on what we got from the survey forms that James & Brandon collected, we will do some adjustments to the game to get it polished.

Thanks for reading.